Hack Education Weekly News

Audrey Watters

on
01 Jul 2016

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Education Politics

Well the UK’s Brexit shitshow continues, with all sorts of machinations this past week about who’ll be the new PM. Not Brexit campaign leader Boris Johnson, apparently. Perhaps the new Prime Minister will be fellow "leave" supporter Michael Gove, who betrayed Johnson this week (or Gove’s wife did, at least). You’ll remember Gove, of course, from his role as the former education secretary and as special friend of News Corp's Joel Klein. Or perhaps you’ll remember him from this Vine:

The US Department of Education released its “#GoOpenDistrict Launch Packet,” encouraging schools to use OER. As Stephen Downes comments, “I find it interesting that they refer throughout to ‘openly licensed educational materials’ rather than ‘open educational resources’ – I wonder what the reasoning was behind that.” Rebrand. Realign. Rewrite history. The usual, I’d wager.

Via The Wall Street Journal: “Aiming to boost the growth of charter schools in cities nationwide, the Walton Family Foundation plans to announce a $250 million initiative Tuesday to help charters build and expand their sites.”

“Kansas lawmakers, trying to head off a court shutdown of the state’s public schools, have increased aid to poor districts by $38 million,” NPR reports.

Via Politico: “The Education Department announced Thursday that Navient – the loan servicing giant that’s a frequent target of the political left – is one of three finalists to develop the first part of the Obama administration’s planned overhaul of how it collects federal student loans.” Nothing to see here…

Fact checking “Trump campaign’s claim that State Department gave $55.2 million to Laureate Education after hiring Bill Clinton.”

We know about Trump University. But apparently there was also the Trump Institute. According to The New York Times, “Trump Institute Offered Get-Rich Schemes With Plagiarized Lessons.”

Via The 74: “Trump Towers Over Education: How His Candidacy Is Already Affecting Federal Policy.”

Education in the Courts

The US Supreme Court has refused to re-open the Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association case (which involves public sector union dues), which it deadlocked over earlier this year.

Via ABC News: “ A defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone magazine over the magazine’s debunked article about a University of Virginia gang rape was tossed out by a judge Tuesday. U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel in Manhattan said the lawsuit brought by three former fraternity members cited comments that were offered as speculation and hypothesis rather than fact.”

Via The New York Times: “Accused in Two Rapes, Former Student at Indiana University Avoids Prison With Plea Deal.”

Coding Bootcamps and the Once and Future “For-Profit Higher Ed”

Via Politico: “Bid to buy for-profit college by former Obama insiders raises questions.” (The for-profit in question: the University of Phoenix.)

Via The Chronicle of Higher Education: “The fourth and final ‘Borrower Defense Progress Report’ was released on Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Education. It cites 26,603 claims for debt relief, of which 87 percent were from former students at the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges Inc., according to the agency. As of June 24, the report says, the department had approved more than 11,000 claims for student-debt relief, for a total of more than $170 million.”

Meanwhile on Campus

NPR’s Anya Kamenetz has an in-depth look at the technology and behavior management practices at the Rocketship chain of charter schools: “High Test Scores At A Nationally Lauded Charter Network, But At What Cost?” Hours in front of the computer, classes of 50 to 70 students, urinary tract infections, and “Zone Zero,” where total silence is enforced. The students are largely low income, Latinos, and these practices wouldn’t be acceptable at schools populated by upper middle class white kids Also unacceptable, apparently: reporting critically about Rocketship, as severalpublications – funded by the same folks who fund Rocketship. Funny how that works – lambasted Kamenetz for her story. The 74 just went ahead and published a response from the CEO of Rocketship. Because that’s ethical and responsible journalism.

Also via NPR: “From YouTube Pioneer Sal Khan, A School With Real Classrooms.”

Via Buzzfeed: “Michael Katze, famous for his studies of Ebola and the flu, ran a lab at the University of Washington where intoxication and sexual harassment went unchecked, and where he misused public resources for personal gain.”

“The University of Tennessee’s Health Science Center will no longer use live animals to train medical students,” The Chronicle of Higher Education reports. Its the last American university to do so, and it will now use simulations instead.

Via Inside Higher Ed: “Oregon’s free community college program begins this fall, but several two-year-college leaders in the state say the grant program is underfunded and too exclusive.”

I’m not sure if you’re watching the sex crime scandal at the Oakland Police Departmentunfold. It involves officer suicide, cover-ups, resignations (and much more), and this week there were revelations that the teenage victim at the center of much of this was a former student at a high school to which several of the police officers involved were assigned. The East Bay Express has the story.

Accreditation and Certification

Via Inside Higher Ed: “Excelsior College and publisher Cengage Learning on Tuesday said they would partner to create self-paced online degree programs to give students an alternative pathway to college credit.”

There’s some more research on badges and alternative credentials in the research section below.

Go, School Sports Team!

Via The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Baruch College of the City University of New York lacked institutional control over its athletics program when two staff members gave 30 athletes impermissible student aid and benefits over five years, the National Collegiate Athletic Association said in a news release on Thursday.” That aid totaled $255,097.

From the HR Department

“Civil rights activist and former Baltimore mayoral candidate DeRay Mckesson will return to his old stamping grounds at city school headquarters to lead the district’s office of human capital,” The Baltimore Sun reports.

Lots of press releases were issued this week to coincide with the ISTE conference in Denver – Amazon’s new OER platform, for example. I’ve included most of those in the upgrades and downgrades section below.

Microsoft must’ve paid the big bucks to have this announced at the opening session: “ISTE and Microsoft collaborate to provide new school planning and professional learning resources.”

“Amazon Unveils Online Education Service for Teachers,” The New York Times writes about the online retailer’s forays into “OER.” And just one day later: “Amazon Inspire Removes Some Content Over Copyright Issues,” Natasha Singer reports. The content in question, featured in screenshots that Amazon sent journalists as part of the press package, were lifted from rival site TeachersPayTeachers. More on Amazon Inspire from the press release and from Edsurge.

As Phil Hill notes, Amazon is already a powerful player in the ed-tech market, providing the “cloud” platform for many major ed-tech companies.

Elsewhere in Amazon news, The New York Times reports the company has reached a deal whereby Amazon Prime will be the exclusive streaming service for most of PBS‘s kids’ TV shows.

One company not using Amazon to run its computing infrastructure: Blackboard. It announced this week it has entered a “strategic relationship” with IBM, which will run its data centers and send out joint press releases making big claims about what IBM Watson can do for education.

“For-Profit Coalition Seeks to Bolster the Flipped-Classroom Approach,” The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on what appears to be a new company founded by BAM Radio’s Errol St. Clair Smith. Fees to join the Flipped Learning Global Initiative are $5000/year.

Googlereleased a handful of updates timed with ISTE, including Google Cast for Education which I heard someone say was the product most enthusiastically received by educators at the conference. A screen sharing app. Good grief, raise your standards, people. Other updates: an Expeditions app, quizzes in Google Forms, a partnership with TES, a physical coding project.

Not sure if this is new or just new-to-me, but the learn-to-code startup Codecademy now has a paid “Pro” option that, for $19.99/month gives you a “personalized learning plan.”

“An Evernote Free Basic Account is Now Basically Useless,” Gizmodo writes. Honestly, even a paid Evernote account seems iffy these days. (And the company makes it really challenging to get your content out in a usable format too. Maybe this time folks will learn their lesson. LOL.)

Funding and Acquisitions (The Business of Ed-Tech)

Blackboard – or an affiliate of Blackboard recently formed by its parent company, Providence Equity Partners – has acquiredHigher One for $260 million, a move that will allow Blackboard to handle more financial services for schools. More via the Washington Business Journal.

Barnes & Noble Education has acquiredPromoversity, which offers customized merchandize and is one of the most unpleasant company names I’ve come across in a while.

Data and “Research”

Via The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Nine percent of community-college students, or nearly one million people, attend institutions that don’t participate in the federal student-loan program, according to a study released on Wednesday by the Institute for College Access and Success.”

Via Inside Higher Ed: “Students and their families are receiving scholarships and grants to cover more of the price of college, according to the latest installment of an annual survey conducted by Sallie Mae, the student lender.” (Where “more” is not “most.” Most is still loans. Thanks, Sallie Mae.)

According to research presented at the American Society for Engineering Education, “Most students will make an earnest attempt to answer homework questions without peeking at the answer, even if cheating is just a click away, a new study found.”

EdWeek’s Market Brief has a write-up of a recent study by the Software & Information Industry Association about why teachers take online PD courses. This biggest reasons: “how to use digital devices, how to use the educational software that goes on them, or to find out more about classroom behavior or management.”

Via Education Week: “Alternative-certification programs are bringing in scores more teachers of color, male teachers, and teachers who attended selective colleges than traditional programs. But teachers who enter the profession through such programs also appear to leave it at higher rates – and that gap has been growing since 1999, a provocative new study concludes.”

The University Professional and Continuing Education Association put out this press release: “Pioneering Study Reveals More Than 90 Percent of Colleges and Universities Embrace Alternative Credentials. Millennials prefer badging and certificates to traditional degrees, according to researchers from UPCEA, Penn State and Pearson.” Bullshit. But oh look, Pearson – which wants you to buy its proprietary badge system, Acclaim.

RIP

Pat Summitt, the legendary coach of the University of Tennessee’s Lady Vols basketball team – and one of the greatest coaches in history – died this week, five years after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.